So you want to be a web security researcher?
Summary: PortSwigger researcher James Kettle outlines how to become a web security researcher: learn existing techniques through the Web Security Academy, hackxor.net, and bug bounty programs, then push past the point where technical expertise plateaus. He describes his own path to Practical HTTP Host Header Attacks as a chain of three 'breadcrumbs' - a Django X-Forwarded-Host tip from a forum user, a Piwik password reset flaw, and Piwik's patch - and notes a technique first documented in 2005 and presented at DEF CON in 2016 earned him $70k in bounties in 2019.
What you should know: Kettle's point is that forgotten research stays exploitable: DNS rebinding, published in 2009, bypassed IP and firewall access controls and only returned to common awareness with a string of exploits nine years later - so the techniques your team assumes are handled may simply be ones nobody has re-read the archive on.
Read the original at PortSwigger Research ↗
- Topics
- Vulnerabilities & Patching
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